


Start at the Beginning

by mechanonymouse



Category: The Invisible Library - Genevieve Cogman
Genre: Gen, WB: The Language (The Invisible Library) - Freeform, WB: The history of the Library (The Invisible Library) - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-24
Updated: 2018-02-24
Packaged: 2019-03-22 23:28:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13774857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mechanonymouse/pseuds/mechanonymouse
Summary: In the beginning there was no Library and no Language.





	Start at the Beginning

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Isis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Isis/gifts).



> This was great fun to write, I hope you enjoy.

In the beginning there was no Library and no Language. The many universes floated unconnected to each other with nothing binding them together or crossing between them. Then came the Dragons and the Fae. No-one knows how they came to be or how they can travel between the universes but they burst into life at the same moment and in that same moment, quiet and unremarkable compared to the immediate war between the Dragons and the Fae was a seed, a seed of the place that would become the Library.

 

It was small, loosely floating between two universes not quite touching either. An inert observer until it was pulled, stretched until it touched both universes. It was longer now and it could describe why it had changed. The language was born.

 

Written language had developed in both universes and it was connected to them in the exact location that first word was written. Not tightly there was no way for anything to pass between the universes and it or through it to each other but it was connected.

 

The seed observed. The Fae and Dragons had reached a truce that split the in-between in half and it was directly in centre. Able to see everything it watched, learn and occasionally it grew as the new universes began to write. As it grew it described it’s observations, this was a stalemate, a parlay, in a cold war but it what would happen if one side won? It was neutral.

 

There was a tug it hadn’t felt before. It was bound fully anchored to one universe at a - it didn’t have the words to describe this. It was a room filled with written works. A Library the people using the room said. There was a doorway, to this place of knowledge and between it and this universe. The seed could see inside the library and as the seed looked it changed. The library had four walls with shelves of rolled scrolls and bound books lining them. The floor was tiled and covered in rugs. It was lit by guttering candles that sat on desks laid out across the open space. The seed was now the same but it had no writings to fill its shelves.

 

Until a man stumbled with a book through its doorway and pushed the book into one of its empty shelves before leaving. With the book, its connection to the universe became stronger and it was an interesting book the man had left. It told the history of the place it came from. The seed thought it would rather dislike to have been described the way the book described the ruler of this place.

 

The next time there was a tug the seed knew what to expect. A new doorway, and a new place to observe. This place wasn’t as interesting as the first library, harried scribes wrote on long rolls of velum. Listing salaries, taxes, sentences, and deaths. Sometimes one of them stumbled through its doorway to misplace a scroll which the seed wished they would stop doing.

 

As more and more of the universes gathered collections of written work the seed grew and tightened its connections to the universes and as more of those connections were to administrative centres the more it identified itself as a Library like its first door.

 

It gained more and more works, sometimes it spat the works back out, especially when it was yet another record of acres planted to grain harvested. It thought it might like to write a book about itself.

 

The Library was lonely. It was visited, but no-one stayed and they never understood it. It quickly learnt it couldn’t make anyone stay. It could stop people from coming but it couldn’t prevent a door from opening from it to a universe without cutting itself off from that universe. Its visitors could open any door to leave even if that door was to the wrong world. Sometimes a visitor would pick up a book from another universe but they wouldn’t understand it and would put it down confused and leave – often through the wrong door never to return. Until two children wandered in to it. They were small, frightened but curious and they picked up any one of the Library’s works regardless of where it came from or what language it was written in. They were most interested in the ones with pictures pointing at them and puzzling out the writing must mean until they fell asleep on the soft cushions and blankets the Library provided. They would leave, through a random door, only when their stomachs growled and return furtively.

 

They stayed and the Library liked them but still they didn’t understand it. It though maybe it should write a book. Start by describing their arrival and then go back to the beginning show them everything.

 

It took a very long time for the Library to write the first volume of everything and for them to find the book. Over that time the Library had begun to become concerned, they didn’t change except when they left the library and they never left for more than a few days at a time. They were still children when the people from their universe who were children with them were bones in the ground.

 

They left for a long time after they read the first volume. When they returned they were tall and slim young adults. They used the Library’s Language it had taught them to change it to suit them. They knew now how to purposefully use the doors. They brought it new books every time they came back and could identify a new door to new universe.

 

It wasn’t lonely anymore but it wasn’t in control of itself anymore. Its shape was defined by them and the new people that they brought in. It was bound tightly to these Librarians, it would be alone and would have to leave itself always open to gain any new information possibly even to those universes heavily warped by the Fae or the Dragons, both of which felt equally wrong to it, if it were to reject them but they now controlled it.


End file.
